The Sales Leader Toolbox: Coaching during One-on-Ones.

Coaching is a skill that is required for all sales leadership roles, from First-Line Sales Manager to Chief Revenue Officer.

However, in a fast-paced industry where quick returns on investment are expected, leaders need to be more intentional. They need COACH MORE and MENTOR LESS.

It seems understandingly natural for a leader to TELL his team what to do. In fact, during a coaching session, the coachee is expected to provide all the answers. The effectiveness lies in the coachees' engagement and the knowledge that they have all the answers. It is a fact that coaching at first demands a greater investment in both TIME and ENERGY. However, the upside is massive for the teams, the company, and the leaders.

The goal of this article is to equip leaders with an approach and tools that they can leverage during their weekly one-on-one meetings with their Account Executives (AEs) so that coaching can be:

• Regular.
• A state of mind.
• A communication style.

As a former Business Developer Manager at Segment and later a Sales Manager at Fivetran, I always had simple and clear goals for these conversations:

• Connect with each Business Developer Representative (BDR) or AE to maintain and nurture the relationship based on the following core values (always communicate openly, always learn about the team & always stay authentic).
• Understand why some reps are successful (we do more of that) or unsuccessful (we fix the problem) with pipeline creation in order to increase conversion rates.
• For AEs only. Progress deals to accelerate sales cycles and reduce time to revenue (TTR).

Connect with your Account Executive

Let's be real, as an AE, I did not always look forward to my meetings with all my managers. However, the meetings where mutual trust and open communication had previously been developed were very enjoyable. Typically, my managers lead the first part of our meeting with open questions and were excellent listeners. The best of them convinced me they cared, as they would always remember personal matters that were really important. They were curious about me and the things that were part of my well-being, including non-work-related topics. These leaders inspired me and raised my energy at work. Later, as a leader myself, I remained inspired by them and I would remain curious about my reps.

Tip: Always allocate up to a third of your weekly one-on-one to learn more about your AE or to follow up on a previous conversation. This is how you will maintain the connection, trust, and engagement of your team. Ask open questions about family, hobbies, and ongoing life events. Regularly enquire about your employees' well-being.

Pipeline

You should allocate a third of the duration of the meeting to Pipeline as it is a key indicator of success.

"Predictable Lead Generation, the most important thing for creating predictable revenue". (AAron Ross & Marylou Tyler).

Sales leaders need to understand the sales funnel and the conversion rates per segment, solution, and key region. As a result, they will be able to know exactly if they have the right amount of pipeline and if not how much more they need per AE.

Business results today are the result of the sales activities last quarter. As a result, time must be dedicated on a regular basis to drive the right behaviours. To succeed, leaders must adopt a coaching approach by the number. This type of alignment is not provided by most traditional coaching models as they are not sales-specific.

I personally love the Sales Coaching Model created by Jason Jordan, Zorian Rotenberg, and Mike Baker. It focuses on:

1. Alignment between the desired results,
2. Objectives & activities,
3. Regular monitoring of the chosen activities during structured conversations.

Let's say the data suggests that an AE is not creating enough opportunities, the sales leader needs to drill down to understand the root causes. The best way to identify the areas where coaching is most needed is by tracking the activity levels and comparing them with the AE's own goals. Activities such as the number of emails sent, the number of dials, and the duration of the calls need to be considered.

Let's look at an example with real numbers:

Monthly Booking target: USD 100K

Monthly Pipeline creation target: USD 300K.

Booking for March 2023: USD 100K

Pipeline created in March: 150K

Pipeline creation gap for March: 150K -> The focus should be on the pipeline as next month the revenue closed will be impacted

Leverage data from your systems (here Outreach):

Here are examples of simple open questions you can leverage with your AE:

• What's your achievement this month for both Pipeline Creation and Booking?
• What's your gap for Pipeline Creation?
• What's the reason for this gap? Any challenges you faced in March?
• Looking at your monthly Pipeline Creation goal for March, what's your activity level (emails sent and calls per week & Month)?
• (If a gap) What's your activity gap for March (emails sent and calls per week & month)?
• How can you bridge this gap in April?
• What did you learn from March? Anything you need to do differently in April?

Tip: It is important to ASK these or similar questions and not to TELL the AE what to do. They should come up with all the answers which will make them more committed to the action plan they will create for April.

Deal Execution

The approach is very similar here.

Prepare for your meeting and look at the AE's forecast and the deals in commit.

Here are some open-ended questions regarding the AE's overall forecast:

• What's your booking achievement for this month?
• What's your gap to target?
• What are the remaining deals in commit?

Then, focus on a couple of deals in commit with the lowest CRM score (or not progressing). For each deal, the leader can ask:

• What are the positive business outcomes (business goals) they are trying to achieve with our solution?
• Who is the Economic Buyer (EB)? How often did we speak with him?
• Who is our Champion? How confident are we that we have a Champion? How did we test him/her?
• What are their technical requirements?
• Are they looking at an alternative? If yes, what is the alternative solution being considered? How are we placed compared to the competition?
• What's the decision process?
• What is the paper process?

The questions will help identify the gaps and the AE should come up with a plan. You might choose to help with the plan but first, they need to be pro-active.

Tip: For the 1:1 to be interactive and engaging, you need to ask open-ended questions and let the AE speak 80% of the time. The AE should leave the meeting with a clear understanding of what they need to do in the next coming days, so progress can be made on the pipeline creation and the deal execution.

Stay tuned for more content!

Happy Coaching!

Liliane